How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment

How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment

<P>In<br />the thirteenth century, Zen master Dogen—perhaps the most significant of all<br />Japanese philosophers, and the founder of the Japanese Soto Zen sect—wrote a<br />practical manual of <br /><I>Instructions<br />for the Zen Cook<br /></I>.<br />In drawing parallels between preparing meals for the Zen monastery and<br />spiritual training, he reveals far more than simply the rules and manners of<br />the Zen kitchen; he teaches us how to "cook," or refine our lives. In<br />this volume Kosho Uchiyama Roshi undertakes the task of elucidating Dogen's<br />text for the benefit of modern-day readers of Zen. Taken together, his<br />translation and commentary truly constitute a "cookbook for life,"<br />one that shows us how to live with an unbiased mind in the midst of our<br />workaday world.